Perception of human extinction risk: The threat of nuclear annihilation was a significant concern in the lives of many people from the 1950s through the 1980s. All past predictions of human extinction have proven to be false; to some, this makes future warnings seem less credible. John von Neumann was probably wrong in having a certainty that nuclear war would occur. (Of course, our survival is not, in itself, proof that the chance of a fatal nuclear exchange was low, or that such an event could not occur in the future). Others, such as Nick Bostrom, argue that the lack of human extinction in the past is weak evidence that there will be no human extinction in the future, due to survivor bias and other anthropic effects. Bostrom speculates that extinction risk-analysis may be an overlooked field because it is both too psychologically troublesome a subject area to be attractive to potential researchers, and because the lack of previous human species extinction events leads a depressed view of the likelihood of it happening under changing future circumstances. It is possible to do something about dietary or motor-vehicle health threats. It is much harder to know how existential threats should be minimized. Some Behavioural finance scholars claim that recent evidence is given undue significance in risk analysis. Roughly speaking, 100 year storms tend to occur every twenty years in the stock market as traders become convinced that the current good times will last forever. Doomsayers who hypothesize rare crisis-scenarios are dismissed even when they have statistical evidence behind them. An extreme form of this bias can diminish the subjective probability of the unprecedented. Many people believe humanitys intelligence and sense of self preservation offer safe-guards against extinction. They argue that people will find creative ways to overcome potential threats, and will take care of the precautionary principle in attempting dangerous innovations. Others believe that the management of destructive technology is becoming difficult, and that the precautionary principle is often abandoned whenever the reward appears to outweigh the risk. Shortly before the Trinity nuclear test, one of the projects lead scientists (Teller) speculated that the fission explosion might destroy New Mexico and possibly the world, by causing a reaction in the nitrogen of the atmosphere. Hans Bethe then calculated that such a reaction was theoretically impossible. It is unknown whether the U.S. would have eventually proceeded with the test anyway, had Bethe calculated a small but nonzero risk of destroying the world. And then, theres the Alien threat....We are in the process of taking over your planet, Earth....
Posted on: Thu, 17 Apr 2014 19:28:03 +0000
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